Hi guys,
A few days ago I received my new EVGA GTX 770 SC and proceeded to install it into my PC (specs at the end of the post). When I booted up, however, the windows logo froze just before it would become the login screen.
My computer is starting to age now so I thought the BIOS might be out of date so I updated it - no change. I managed to boot into safe mode and install the nVidia drivers and then I could boot into Windows. However I noticed that I didn't have Aero and the card was (I felt) underperforming (changing graphics settings from Ultra to Medium made little difference and the card struggled with explosions, etc).
I switched back to my old card (XFX HD 5870) but the Aero probem persisted (the default troubleshooter couldn't identify the problem and the "FixIt" said that the card doesn't support Aero). Then (after I decided "what the heck") I uninstalled the AMD drivers and attempted to reboot. I had the same issue of the startup screen freezing, only this time I couldn't install the AMD drivers in safe mode (the card detection bit failed).
I have further investigated the problem and can say that there's nothing wrong with Windows; I can in fact log into Windows (I can hear the startup and login sounds) but the output stays frozen with the Windows start logo. I have also tried moving both cards to a different PCI-E slot, but to no avail.
Can any of you guys shed some light on this matter (especially as it was a simple graphics card change that started it) or think of further things I can do to troubleshoot? I have not yet reinstalled Windows as I just don't have the time to reinstall everything and the fact that I can log in is making me reluctant to do so.
Thanks!
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PC Specs:
- Intel Core i7 950 (at stock speeds)
- ASUS Sabertooth x58 (BIOS revision: 0802 -> 1402 -> 1306)
- EVGA GTX 770 SC / XFX HD 5870 BE
- Coolermaster Silent Pro 800W PSU
- 12GB Corsair XMS3 1600MHz RAM
- Windows 7 x64 Ultimate